Poems to the Fonce River, the Gallineral Park and the city. The afflatus and deity of consecrated Santandereano bards. Subtle butterfly verses, with freshness of moss, cicada and swallow’s flight, with smells of tobacco flower and rose apple, and flavors of jelly and sugar cane brandy.

To start this chapter of anthological poetry of San Gil, I would like to pay tribute of admiration to my favored Santandereano bards: the poet and soldier Custodio Garcia Rovira, Jose Eusebio Caro, Daniel Mantilla Orbegozo, Ismael Enrique Arciniegas, Emilio Pradilla, Camilo Barrera Vargas, Luis Enrique Antolinez, Gregorio Rueda, Guillermo and Luis Domingo Mantilla, Tobias Valenzuela, Aurelio Martinez Mutis, Toms Vargas Osorio, the illustrious intellectual Carlos Torres Durn (author of a beautiful poem to my mother), Luis Modesto Gomez, Martinez Collazos, Roberto de J. Diaz, Horacio Gonzlez Reyes, Valentin Nuntildeez, Luis Ernesto Puyana, Rafael Ortiz Gonzlez (author of my small biography which honors me in this work), Juan Cristobal Martinez, Xavier Carrentilde Harker (most beloved friend until his death), Cristian Clausen, Juan de Dios Arias, Ricardo Ortiz McCormick, Pablo Zogoibi, Gustavo Coite Uribe, Jose Manuel Prada Sarmiento, Alfredo Lamus, Gonzalo Buenahora, Jorge Saul Meneses, Jorge Sanchez Camacho, Jorge Villarreal, Juan Manuel Camargo, Jaime Duarte French, Eugenio Pinto Barajas, the brothers Lagos, Carmen de Gomez Mejia, Estrella del Cielo Rueda, Alicia de Gomez, and Mary Rueda Rueda, author of a beautiful poem of festive flavor brought here. David Martinez Collazos wrote the poem: “To San Gil” “No longer of rancid timber nor vain arrogance, from your illustrious cradle. tradition shines. In your limpid purity, clear proud city, that other are your treasures and other are your crowns.
At the foot of austere hills which surround your landscape, and from your noble origin, proclaiming pulchritude, the women singing, the bells vibrating. Your river is like a sunny whip over your shoulder, and the days pass by, and magic painters exalt your beauty. Duchess city white and brunette with those warm eyes of white lily, with those colors of the turquoise”. The poet and attorney Roberto Linares sings to the river with this poem: “A Orillas del Fonce” (The Fonce River Bank)

“As a vision which enraptures the mood in the middle of a complex serrania, the city, afar, delights itself, under the serene blue immensity. In the ravine, through the umbrageous ceiba, the water flogs the sleeping sand it thunders, when it crashes against the rocks, the space dome, his brave song. Frondose river bank where the soul is, after rough battle, the desired calm, flower gardens of quiet for the wearisomeness. I want to be taken by your current, and to sleep my painful spirit, in your savage orchestration, oh river”.
Fabin Rivero published a sonnet upon his return to San Gil entitled: “Return” “ Fonce’s Pearl! Crowned town, I return to your maternal bosom, and, I want, as loyal, and, as good son, to leave constancy of my love. And each vibrant note of my lyre, full of deep and delicate emotion I want to sing a song that the serene environment of the desolate night extends through the air whispering a psalmody of sincere passion that dampens at the end like a wave. That the blue chlamys, carrying notes, comes to die to the shore’s foot, with a fainting, crying, alone”. The poetess Nohra Cuellar wrote a beautiful sonnet to San Gil entitled: “Panoramic Silhouette”
“Under the blue light that adorns you, surrounded by rivers and hills stretched out over the green rug, in sweet ecstatic rapture of oriental sultana. The Fonce is your untiring troubadour that sings to you, whispering psalmodies, and kisses you with shaking lips in rapture of the sweet and noble love. when, in the evening with rouge veils, under the frondose and shady boscage, your royalty and seigniorage suffer from nostalgia. Coming from Castilian heritage, the Hispanic grandiosity on which dominions the sun never sat also suffers from nostalgia”. The Sangilentilde poet and journalist, Carlos Otero Gomez, published a beautiful sonnet, about the Fonce River, in the Indice magazine, entitled: “The Fonce During the Night” “The colossus comes with terrible impulse, the waves strike the dark rock, and, among the white whirlpools, water stretches out in gentle eddy. A moan, a cry can be heard which disturbs that silence of the night, as if the river, which comes from afar, suffers a lot. The mute stones of the beach wait they look like people bathing in the torrent waves. And that colossus that passes through the night carries in its bosom the cry of this race that sleeps sweetly on its shore”. The famous intellectual and poet from Zapatoca, Victor Gomez Naranjo, wrote a poem about the Sangilentilde River, in 1910, entitled: “On the Fonce’s shores” “I am alone at the desert beach the waves go tumultuous and restless. The evening is sad and to the rhythm of the water, the wind sings painful barcaroles. A pair of white gulls rise happily from the rush. Ironies of life, while away, I am sad with your memory I nd myself alone, while I review the burdensome days. My eyes follow the restless waves. Meanwhile the earth and my soul arrive to the courtship of the shadows. Will you think of me, too? Do you cry in this instant because of our absence? The evening is sad the wind cries the waves go tumultuous and restless”.
The poetess, Aura del Rio, wrote a delicate sonnet for the weekly publication, El Heraldo, in 1942, entitled: “Fonce River”
“The Fonce slides seriously, loudly, in a deep and stony bed. A courtship of waves unhinges, carrying its undulating back. It comes fromthe south to the west, it goes. Flower gardens are given life with its waters with its breezes, it communicates freshness and it has frigidity from the white frost. He is the son of Tquiza and Pienta, He carries what impulses or destroys him. In its fast course, shows off its beauty. Following with murmurs, after death, it gets closer, stops and then flees to fall inert in the arms of the sea”. The poet, under the pseudonym Tony Aspiat, wrote a beautiful and noble sonnet about San Gil in the Sangilentilde newspaper La Opinion it states:
“The town of Santa Cruz”
“You are the pearl that your river runs to kiss your feet with holy love and to lull and spoil you with its loud song as the bronzes of your tower. You base your pride in royal timber, that the noble Captain Don Gil Cabrera gave you a golden blazon, when he gave you name and arms of Baeza. Today, you guide the carriage of progress, without risk, under the somnolent frond, where one day, Don Leonardo Betancur lighted the sacred re, and enthroned the Cross, beloved symbol, that your sons’ rm faith nourishes”
The famous Santandereano poet, Aurelio Martinez Mutis, published Christmas carols with a Sangilentilde theme, in a December, some thirty years ago. They are still sung by Don Juans with guitars and they are entitled: “Songs to the Fonce” “Tonight is Christmas Eve and tomorrow, Christmas, on the Fonce’s shores lets go and wash near the Gallineral Gardens. Clothing has to be like a snowy eld to wear to the religious feast. The laundresses are washing at the river bank clothing on the rocks sounds with a musical tone, and other women dancing on the sheep path. Cyclopean rocks carved by millenarian rush bring the dead Atlantis in the evoking thread. Prophets, emperors, ladies of flowery bodies left in their hair, gullets of sail, rice and long lines of grotesque among the trees. The man who wishes to clean his beard, he can do it in the swallow’s deep pool thousands of birds fly toward the plantations which would give them grain decorated by the sun.
With music and heart the angels bathe in the river’s backwater. Mother Earth grows where the Tquiza and Pienta Rivers unite like brothers forming the Fonce which unites with the Chicamocha to go and die in the sea. Wind and water sustain the race in its vigor. Tomorrow is Conception. So clean must the clothes be that in the morning they will hang fresh, as sewn with sun’s threads. Everything is white in the city, maize, milk, clouds, air, the sounds of the sheep paths, the sheep’s baa. The whole day is Conception day the whole day is Christmas. To the clear heights of the ideal, for centuries the laundresses are washing tradition, home, the noble men and the city blazon are common criers with the whiteness of our ancestral hands, a thousand years ago”. The Sangilentildea Poetess, Elvia Garcia de Moreno wrote the poem entitled: “Beautiful Island”
“Beautiful island, beautiful island, mythological piece of this prodigious dream, San Gil. Your father, the Fonce River, hugs you among its arms. And your mother, the Curiti Brook kisses you. Beautiful island, beautiful island, from your giant trees, hang wide curtains of gray moss made by gnomes and decorated by nymphs, to enhance your rich greenery. Your mornings are so clear, and your mountains so fresh, that down, under the centenary fronds, all the birds try, every day, their songs. And, then, they fly, under the deep blue sky, along the plentiful tropical landscape. Your evenings are pompous. when the dying evening light torrent breaks through the branches, the sun disguises on the grass, roses more bloody and brilliant than the ones in Istanbul. Beautiful island, beautiful island, through your many bent and convoluted paths, Eros, pale, comes in the nocturnal hour, shaking among murmurs, sighs, secrets and the sweet rhythm of the nuptial music.
Someone says that Venus Aphrodite went to your fronds, a dignied temple of your glories and that she inspires the romances and the kisses and the tempest. But you, pure white angel, who put re of fervent and noble love in the souls, and, there, on hidden paths, with small jasmine and geraniums, drunken from passion, many dreams displayed the plumage of their wings and the blue took them to the country of illusion.
Beautiful island, beautiful island, I wish that this song comes soon to you, as a fugitive bird comes to you. And, under the sweet and idyllic rest make a nest of its ephemeral life, while the old Fonce continues its millenary songs and hugs you with the Curiti Brook”. The poet Hernn Patintilde Linares wrote a poem to the Gallineral Park in 1943: “The Gallineral”
“I was looking for maybe, surely, impossible riches, treasures and muses, among the greenery of the beautiful island, one peaceful afternoon. The sunset in the distance, through laces and fantastic mirrors, surrounded the sun with a courtship of reflexes, bluish, under the neck of a heron. The rumors of the torrent, the crushing of the river, all the beauty of the landscape and the forest gathered all my clamor and my calmness. My fragile spirit was taken to other worlds, I did not nd the riches nor the muses but I touched the sweetness of your soul”. The intellectual Julio Galvis inserted a beautiful poem in the Sangilentilde newspaper La Opinion, entitled: “San Gil, the Pearl of the North” “Inclined on the prairie, majestically looking herself on the Fonce’s crystals, and interlaced among the mosses, Bella Isla (Beautiful island) . emerges with her crispy hair.
And, when the sun declines and hides among the nocturnal hills, the Fonce’s full flowing simulates diamonds. The river sings its song carries the rhythm of its beautiful poetry. And when I look at her with distracted eyes, it seems like a harmony, a garden of flowering carnations”.
Jose Ignacio Neiva, an ignored poet, wrote to the Fonce’s Pearl the following: “Distant Silhouette”
“Noble and Loyal San Gil that looks with sadness to her ancient parchments, heraldic greatness, to the Fonce’s edge that reflects her glory roaming in her valley of marvelous history.
Beautiful sleepy city that reels her dreams with her back to the present nostalgia of yesterday absorbed in those times which will not flower again. I am a fugitive from life who looks for asylum in your big colonial homes. Your ground forges my heart and my bones. Your Venus without cult is forgotten, the Guanes, in silence, wait for your blue prince. Belalczar’s dream, to come for ‘El Dorado’, your enchanted valley of the Pearl of the Fonce of innite beauty, your gorgeous women of inviolate purity. The Blue Well, diamond pupil, a rough tear, brave sapphire where the tranquil night stars glimmer and the clouds travel to the remote Nadir. Bella Isla is the sweet lost paradise, where mystery wanders, where sound flows, where the evening cries and the mountains smile, where the enchantment of distant things is seen”.
Alberto Roldn Ramirez dedicated a: “Romance to San Gil” “I am a traveler of the dream and of your enchantment in the shadow. My lyre sings and names you under your sky. The distant remembrance of your generous hand which I always carry with me, the notes, your bed of roses to adorn the foreheads of your beautiful women. You have the Curiti, the delicious brook, where your princesses go as mythological nymphs to submerge under the waters and play over the waves. Because, they know to give their shapes all the enchantment of Rebecca. And she has the Gallineral, the Biblical Eden, great natural garden which evokes the loss, and where provokes to live far from the good and evil. And the Fonce always sings the noblemen’s glory with the song of the foam when it hits the rocks. The glories of those men with golden vestments who gave the legacy to the town of severe norms. And the people remember them well and name them with love. I give you San Gil my romance to adorn your crown. It is a cultivated lily in an unknown region where the gulls go”.
And to have a perfect nish to this chapter, I bring the poem of my sister, Mary Rueda Rueda, entitled: “Sanguilentildea Watercolor” “My village is enclosed among hills and surrounded by the two rivers’ blue ribbons which enamel the plantations of a green color pointed with emerald palms and ceibas. Through its morning mist, the crossings of swallows and pigeons can be seen among the distant ochre towers with gray outlines among the hills. In the afternoon, from the lamb’s ford of the river, the breezes arrive to the mosses and the roads where Mochuelanos and Guanentinos have closed les all the hours and given liberating battles since those Comunero days!”